Silver Clouds and Gray Linings
by Huinari
Summary: Zinnia leaves for the land of fairies in hopes that she'll be able to forge something new with the broken shards of her old self, where too many memories lurk. Eventually, though, they resurface.


warning: headcanon.

* * *

_And at the closing of the day_  
_She loosed the chain, and down she lay;_  
_The broad stream bore her far away_

_The Lady of Shalott,_ Alfred Tennyson

* * *

"Let's go to Kalos," Zinnia says to her pokémon.

Salamence snorts at her, looking at her like she has gone insane with eyes lined ruby-red. Her oldest partner and team leader is more than just some subservient creature – dragons do not have servitude in their souls, and cannot bear to be made servants – but a fellow equal, a mentor. It is acknowledging this that has allowed her to touch and mingle hearts with him, to give him the power to achieve incredible power and transformation in the past.

She smiles at him, daring to play-mock the drake. Above all, they are the friends of the hearts. "You're not scared of fairies, are you?" she teases half-heartedly. Truth is, she is scared at the idea of leaving behind the title of Lorekeeper as well, scared at leaving home and Hoenn, scared at stepping into a new land away from nearly everything she is familiar to. Her heart might falter slightly, reeling at the idea of shedding away everything she has known in an attempt to forge something new out of the flames feeding on her old shell. She will have her pokémon with her, always, and Aster too, but will that be enough when she doesn't know who or where she herself is?

She is Zinnia – she has been Lorekeeper, she has tried to save the world, this world, specifically, she has once been a mother, and she has suffered loss – but that means nothing now, for the present Zinnia in this world at this time who has no idea what she should do next.

Kalos was the first place she chose, if only to get herself out of the Draconid lands. If she does not move now, she never will, and then what will she become?

So she opened a book – a modern book – to a random page and pointed at the first land she saw, and that was the star-land, the country of pretty fairies with a dark history hidden by perfumed beauty.

"Tyrantrum and Noivern came from there," she says, scratching him in the reversed scales under his chin, and in the place where his wings, great tough muscles sleek and capable of slicing through rock if need be, meet his equally strong muscles like the ocean meeting the land. He grumbles, but it's a more appeased sound now that escapes his throat. "Goodra, too. Dragons live there as well. You'll be fine amongst the scary dragon-slaying fair folk."

He looks at her, and snorts in the back of his throat. _But fairies, _he seems to say._ They rule predominantly in that land._

In the end, however, the great drake lets Zinnia do as she wishes.

* * *

_Zinnia is young – barely entering adulthood – when she gives birth to her daughter. _

_The giving of birth, bringing life into this world is painful in ways she has never imagined. It burns, it pulls and it yanks at everything she has, more than what she knew she had, and it takes hours before she, exhausted, no longer harbours any hearts except her own within her body. _

_The pain was immense, and the months of pregnancy before this challenging, but that does not stop her from loving Aster. She clings to the child, doting on her, protecting her as fiercely as a wrathful, raging salamence. She took on her duty as Lorekeeper before Aster's birth, before Aster's pregnancy, but that is no obstacle, not when she is determined to love her child and do her duty. _

* * *

She nearly gives up on the idea of leaving when, at the airport filled with impatient modern people and sterile air, she is asked to return Aster to her poké ball by the clerk at the desk who will check her papers before letting her board the metal contraception shaped a bit like a salamence, a bit like a skarmory.

"But," she says, and a part of her wonders what words will come out of her mouth next.

_But she's my daughter._

_But I need her._

_But I can't go on without her._

_But I can't put her in the ball._

_But she's my _daughter_._

Zinnia might have done or said something incredibly stupid and reckless had Aster not been so quick-witted and thoughtful. She digs into Zinnia's bag and pulls out a poké ball – the one, she thinks, that she offered to the young hero who took on the burdens of a thousand adults on her frail shoulders – and taps the button with her ear. The ball shakes, but doesn't break open.

"If that's done," the clerk says, bland and polite but clearly bored and wishing that she, the abnormal customer, would just move on so he can go back to his routine of stamping papers and giving sterile-as-the-air smile to his normal customers that just want things done efficiently and quickly. "I'd just like to remind you that pokémon are not to be released on board before, during or after the flight. Once you are off the plane, you may release your pokémon, provided that it will not be too big so as to block traffic, or have qualities that may be offensive or disturbing to other customers, such as possessing a strong scent. Have a nice day, ma'am."

She takes the passport and ticket stub he offers, still clutching at the ball Aster put herself in, and staggers onto the plane with her bag – filled with modern clothes that make her feel stiff and awkward – in her other hand.

Zinnia takes the seat designated for her by the piece of wrinkled paper stuck between the pages of her passport, and leans back to look outside the small pothole. The wings stretch out in the corner of her eye, and she sees the field the plane will run down before it launches into the air.

The flight will take hours – seven, to be exact, but there are always delays caused by outside factors – and is too far of a distance for powerful Salamence or gentle Altaria or even speedy Noivern to cover. Her legs feel cold without Aster's soft pink fur brushing against them, and even more so when the anklet shaped like a dragon rubs against her ankle's bones, reminding her of what she lost, what she used to be, and how she feels so empty now, a person without purpose or meaning as the ancient ornament saps what warmth her leg has.

She rubs her hands against her upper arms, and nearly flinches at how icy the tips of her fingers are against the skin of her biceps.

* * *

_Aster grows up, raised by a mother who has fierce dragons lined at her belt and stories of the best kind, the tales of their draconian heritage. She is a sweet child, and such a clever one as well. She learns everything so quickly, and even at the age of four is learning how to tell stories with a charm that captivates the listener. _

_Zinnia wants to show her the stars, the meteor showers that pepper through the dark fabric of the night sky like silver needles bursting through and disappearing in a flash. She tries to describe the memories to the best of her abilities, but her best attempt is mediocre. There are no words to properly describe the fall of stars, the beauty they show in brief moments._

_Aster understands that it is something special her mommy wants to show her, and so she wishes to see them._

* * *

The land of fairies is, predictably, pretty in a delicate sort of way. There are cafés every stone's throw away in the streets of its heart, a bright city of light that shines enough to drown out twinkles of faraway stars in the night sky. The people, dressed in silks and satins like delicate royalty, drift around its bright, clean streets sipping at sweet, small drinks and laughing in a silvery kind of way as they speak with their eyes and hide their curved mouths behind raised hands.

She feels out of place in its dazzling midst, just as out of place as she feels dressed in modern clothes of tight jeans and blouses. They are plain, she has specifically seen to it, but she misses the feel of her cloak, of her Lorekeeper garb – the clothes she can never don again, at least not with their full meaning and significance.

The only thing constant from what she used to have is her anklet, holding the key stone. Her anklet, the dragon lord of the skies wrapped around her right ankle like the green serpent king is ascending to the heavens, and her pokémon. Always her pokémon.

But they are dragons. They are creatures of fierceness that shake the earth and make the skies tremble with their roars, with their very beings. They fly through the air, crush boulders and breathe out fire to paralyze, petrify and burn, all at once. Their beauty lies in their fierceness, their strength, their unquenchable fire that burns within their hearts and souls like a truth that cannot be erased or tampered with.

Kalos is not a land that appreciates the primal beauty of a dragon's rage or fire. They are fairy-lovers, who adore sweetness and delicate ribbons, who love scented flowers and the mystic qualities of the fair folk. They repel dragons with their saccharine aromas, their moonlights.

Zinnia wonders if she'll be able to find herself in a place like this, a place like pictures in silk tapestries too delicate to even touch. She misses the painted walls, the carved stones that depicts pictures of fierce dragons and gods of the sky coming down to forcibly bring order into chaos.

Thankfully not all of Kalos is like the bright and shiny city of Lumiose that doesn't know the comfort of a night sky with starlight. Shalour, she finds in a few days when she has left Lumiose behind for the seaside city, has a rustic charm that she can relate to, that she can appreciate fully. The air smells cleaner, of fresh air washed in by the sea's gentle tides rather than cloistering sweetness of fairy flowers that stings her nostrils and makes her dizzy. At night the stars are clear.

The views of the city are lovely, and she wanders a few of the tourist traps, toying with outrageously priced souvenirs and knickknacks before moving on and eating in less expensive places, looking around at the sights.

In the end, she gravitates towards the obvious feature. The Tower of Mastery is nowhere near as grand or as majestic as the Sky Pillar, at least in her mind. It does not pierce the skies, it is not a homage to the bravest, most giving and protective god in the world and it lacks the presence, the historical air of the ascending dragon guardian's myth. Sky Pillar also had a better name than the Tower of Mastery, in her silent opinion.

But it is a tower with history and myths behind it, and she, as a former Lorekeeper, knows all-too well just how important the two are.

She walks up to it, Aster at her side and her pokémon in a ring of stars around her belt. A man tries to stop her from entering. "Only the worthy can enter," she is told by the guard.

The worthy. What kind of a person is she? What worth does she have?

So far this journey of self-discovery has not told her the answers to those questions burning inside of her like hot coals.

Zinnia is about to turn away and go somewhere else – anywhere – to wander in hopes of understanding when another man's voice interrupts. "Allow her entrance," says the other man, and Zinnia turns to see a man who, while looking nothing like her, reminds her greatly of her grandmother. It might be in the way he carries himself, sure and full of purpose, or it might be in the set of his countenance, how he seems so sure of everything and so wise.

He wears a glove, and the key stone set in it blazes like a small star. She looks down, and under the cuffs of her jeans – the ones she still isn't really used to – she sees a small aurora of light peeking out, shining on the skin of her foot exposed by her sandal. The two key stones are resonating to each other's presence, and that is what has alerted this master of what she holds.

Not who she is. A small stone, as important and powerful as it may be, does not do enough to give her a definition of herself.

Aster chirps to remind her of manners and social conventions, because she needs to pay attention to those now. She thanks the old man, politely ducks her head at the guard and enters. There's nothing really to see – they have history wrong, she thinks dully, reflexively when she is told that the first pokémon to undergo mega evolution was a lucario – but it is a familiar kind of a place, even if she has never once set foot in it before.

She stays, looking out of the window at the wide, clean-looking sea for hours before the sun begins to set, and then she leaves. Aster never once complains, but Zinnia apologizes for making her wait for such a long time.

* * *

_Aster waited and waited in the time that was both too short and too long, but Zinnia never came, not in time to do something like she should have, and she had nightmares about what her daughter must have felt in her last moments._

_She still does, every now and then, and wakes up crying and sweating._

* * *

They wander into Geosenge Town, where Zinnia feels something off about the entire settlement, quiet and peaceful as it may be. There is something ancient dwelling within its lands, something significant waiting on the pull of a trigger, a soft movement of a beautifly's wings that will set off a series of events leading to fierce winds and howling storms.

There is history about to be made here, somehow.

She wonders if there will be a hero, to save the world in that story to be told. She wonders – and smiles ironically – if there will be a Zinnia who will try to save the world, only to bow to the true hero in the end and sit in the sidelines watching history be made.

* * *

_Like most Lorekeepers, Zinnia chooses to not get married. Aster knows only one parent, but she knows enough love to make up for a thousand mothers and fathers. For her daughter, Zinnia would cut off her own arm._

_She wonders sometimes about different timelines and different worlds. Is there a world where she chose to let Aster have her father in her life? Is there a world where, while she was gone, Aster's father might have saved her?_

_Is there a world where Zinnia has a family ring of her own?_

_In the case that there is, she cannot abide the thought of letting that world, the world that would be so perfect, become destroyed. She rejects that option without a second thought for anyone or anything. There is another way, and it will be that way her world takes and no other. _

* * *

At Menhir Trail, she runs fingers across stones worn with age and elements. Despite their ancient status, they still stand in one piece, well taken care of and revered.

There are so many of them, though, and each seems to exude an energy that makes her skin crawl uncomfortably with ancient ghosts of the past. Aster whimpers, and buries her face in Zinnia's neck in fear, refusing to leave the warmth of her arms. She holds her tight, trying to shield her from whatever is terrorizing her.

The logical thing to do, she thinks, would be to leave. But for some reason, she does not. She wanders through the spaces between the lined stones, searching for something she does not understand. Perhaps it is herself, perhaps it is the meaning of her life.

She finds, instead, a tall giant with white hair and an immortal face.

Lorekeepers are more than just storytellers, contrary to the belief of outsiders. The Draconids have always been special people, blessed by Lord Rayquaza countless generations ago, with thousands of rich stories to account for and pass down.

The duty of Lorekeepers was to ensure that vital memories were kept. Stories passed through words have a habit of being distorted, and details are always left out. The best way to ensure that this wouldn't happen, especially with the memories so vital to keeping the world safe when the time came to call upon the god of the skies for his help was to pass the memories themselves on, through the generations.

Zinnia received the memories and the title of Lorekeeper from her grandmother. Her mother died before she could receive it, and so, at a young age, she completed the ceremony and received the knowledge of the dragon's rise to heavens and other memories from the former Lorekeeper.

And had she not been the last Lorekeeper of the Draconid people, Zinnia would have passed her memories to her own daughter so that the tradition of keeping the line alive would be continued.

But she is the current holder of the memories, the ancient stories and experiences that live within her, that will _die_ with her, and in those memories from past Draconids she sees the very same face, the very same man.

"The tall visitor from faraway lands," she whispers, and he hears. He understands.

They wander through the stones together. Technically, she thinks, _she_ is the visitor from faraway lands, at least to him this time around. She is the short visitor – she is barely taller than the young hero who saved the world without getting anyone killed as casualties for a good cause, and the young girl will only grow, because she is oh-so-vibrantly _alive_ – from faraway lands.

Zinnia nearly laughs at the irony.

"Do the Draconids still continue their tradition?" he rumbles in question. From memories she inherited, she remembers him being a reticent man of few words. He only speaks when necessary.

The Draconids continue a great number of their traditions. They are paid to do so, by the Hoenn government – the money from those wishing to preserve the past and its legacies is what has funded her trip to the land of fairies – but Zinnia knows what he means. "The line will stop with me," she says quietly.

Perhaps that holds more meaning than she thinks. There is no reason to pass the memories anymore, not when the dragon lord of the skies has destroyed the last of the threat from the skies that the Draconids could deal with. The ancient dragon rising has been made a reality, the memory of ascending to the heavens in streams of golden light returned to its rightful owner and glory restored to the god of the skies.

She has no daughter to pass the memories onto, anyhow.

The giant man looks down at her, and though his face is unreadable, his eyes look at her with an emotion akin to pity. "What will you do?" he inquires. He has seen nations rise and fall, kings make mistakes and weep before dying, and everything must seem so insignificant to him in the long run, but he chooses to ask about this, the end to a legacy he witnessed at its birth.

Zinnia tightens her hold on Aster. Not enough to hurt or discomfort, but enough so that she may draw some comfort from the warm whismur.

She is supposed to say that she is looking for herself, that she has come to the sweet, fragrant land of fairies that is his homeland to go through a soul-searching experience. She is supposed to ask him for advice, since he has lived so long and seen so many lives.

Zinnia opens her mouth, but she cannot find it in herself to give that as her honest, truthful answer. Her heart rejects it as the truth.

Her heart chooses another answer and deems in acceptable. "I don't know," she chokes out.

She doesn't. All her life, she has trained to fulfil a lifelong duty. If it was not her turn to ascend as the Successor, she was to ensure that the line of Lorekeepers would continue on, and train the next generation in their duties. If the time came for her to ascend and become the Successor of the dragon's complete form, then she was supposed to do everything in her power to ensure that the world was not destroyed by the meteor.

Her lifelong duty is gone from her, snatched away and leaving her with nothing but a husk. And now she has no idea what to do with the rest of her life. She's known so much, through memories of countless Lorekeepers, and she's suffered a great deal of personal pain and even a touch of insanity, and yet the title of Lorekeeper defined such a large part of her.

Without it upon her shoulders like her cape, she is left with an identity crisis.

Who is she? Why is she here?

She breaks down. "I was supposed to die," she blurts out to the stranger her inherited memories know, and then tears start to come out. She starts gasping for breath, because the words are coming out too fast in between sobs and hiccoughs and her body doesn't have nearly enough oxygen for all of this expenditure, this spontaneous confession in the midst of thousands of stones that make her think of graves and needless death and unnecessary sacrifice. "I was supposed to die summoning the god of the skies and changing him into his delta form. No mortal should have been able to see his true form, have been the link between that much power and survive. I was supposed to die, and then I would have been with my daughter."

Zinnia would be surprised if the tall immortal understands even a word of what she thinks she said. She blubbers them out, sniffing and gasping and hiccoughing, and half the time she nearly bites her tongue or chokes as the words burst out of her.

But she says it. She thought of it a hundred, a thousand, a million times as she gathered the key stones and planned for weeks and months how to manipulate the worshippers of greedy titans so that the dragon of the skies would appear. She thought of how she would be able to save everybody, from both this world and the others, of the never-ending, devastating despair that comes from losing someone so precious to one's heart.

She thought of being a martyr, a sacrifice for a worthy cause lying on the Dragonhark Altar to bleed out her lifeblood to save everyone.

Grannie may have suspected, because the woman, old as she may be, is wise as any psychic, but she understood and didn't accuse her of her choices, of her decisions no matter how subjective they might have been. She might have thought the same, or at least sympathized with her, another woman who lost her daughter before her own life.

The young hero might have come to realize her intentions, or at least picked up on it subconsciously from the way she asked to have Aster taken care of if anything happened to her at the zenith of Sky Pillar, in front of the holy sanctuary that is Dragonhark Altar, but the Champion succeeded in saving everyone, including Zinnia. Given the stressful situation, it wasn't likely that the hero remembered the implications, or thought it important now that the danger was dealt with.

Aster – the whismur who patiently bore her pretending that the small creature was her daughter – knew, because the pokémon was just that sensitive and empathic, but Zinnia never said it out loud. She just wanted to let it all happen the way it was supposed to, the way martyrs went down for the sake of others.

Because Zinnia wasn't really a martyr on the inside – she was just an insane woman who had been a mother, who was grieving the loss of her daughter by trying to pretend otherwise and burying herself in her duty.

She cries, too hard to continue speaking. The giant lets her hold onto his eternal frame, and Aster wipes away her tears with her soft ears. Neither speaks; they just let her pour the festering grief out from within her.

* * *

_Aster is five years old when she is attacked by a pack of Mightyena while picking berries and flowers to surprise her mother for no particular reason other than to show her love. Zinnia is in the depths of Meteor Falls, too far away to hear her screams, too far away to do anything to save her as fangs tear into her defenceless flesh and spill blood everywhere._

_Zinnia is twenty four years old when she sees the sight of her dead daughter, and she screams, her mind and heart broken into a thousand pieces._

* * *

"I'm sorry you had to see that," she says when the body-wracking sobs finally stop coming out from her core like earth-shattering tremors, and the tears, like a never-ending sea, cease pouring out. Her voice is hoarse, but it doesn't shake even when she is exhausted from emptying out her grief.

Aster makes a soft sound of relief and hugs her arm, still there for her even when the illusion shatters and the dreams of pretending end. Zinnia hugs her back, and sighs into the soft, warm bundle of short fur and muscle that is the whismur.

The immortal giant helps her back onto her feet. The sun is setting, and her clothes – jeans that felt too tight and stiff around her legs – are stained with green and brown from her time spent crying and kneeling in the middle of the stone-speckled fields. Her face feels swollen, and as she looks at the sky slowly being dyed a fairy pink colour streaked with clouds reflecting golden light, she has to squint several times to get her eyes to focus properly.

"You and your pokémon have a close bond," the giant man notes.

Zinnia closes her eyes, and thinks of how she and Salamence reacted when they heard a scream one day, as they wandered aimlessly through Hoenn, her unable to return home without breaking down into tears or nightmares and him staying by her side to protect her from the world, including herself. How they flew – literally – to the source of the scream that was like the one she imagined up in her nightmares where she was there, as her daughter was killed, but was unable to do anything.

How they saw a pack of mightyena slaughtering a group of whismur. How she shouted for Salamence to do something, how he tore through the predators that paled in comparison to him, a dragon of the skies, ending their lives with his claws and jaws as he doled out punishment like a hand of justice from the heavens.

How only one whismur survived, and refused to leave her side, whimpering and sounding so much like a human baby as Zinnia fixed up her wounds. How she named the small creature 'Aster', despite Salamence giving her worried looks, and how they all returned home, Zinnia calling Aster her daughter and ready to carry on with her duty in life.

How her other dragons stuck with her, lending her their powers and even opening up their hearts to her when she really needed them, how they followed her to the land of fairies, the dragonsbane, the slayers of wyrms and drakes. How Aster acted like a child, how she never evolved for the sake of preserving Zinnia's pretending.

"Thank you," she says, in reply to the man's compliments and to the pokémon that were always there for her, that always loved her.

They all understand what she means.

* * *

It is night when she returns to Geosenge. The next morning, she and Aster and all of her dragons will set off once more to a different part of fairyland, away from this place of anticipation and foreshadowing; he will go and wander the world as he always does, searching what he dedicates his immortal life to.

He gives her advice before he leaves, off to wander the lands on his eternal quest to search for something precious to him. "Live," he rumbles. "Live, and love. Cherish life – all lives."

The immortal giant looks to the direction of the trail with thousands of stones raised in silent, ominous salutations to the skies with a sad look. "Cherish it," he repeats, and then leaves. For a tall man, he moves silently, and quickly – soon he is gone from her line of sight.

Zinnia holds onto Aster. Playing make-belief has ended, but there is no ending love, even if initially it was selfish.

Perhaps she does have a purpose – her purpose, she decides, looking up into night skies where the stars are still visible just like they are in Hoenn, is to live. For now, that is her goal.

Once she gets used to being Zinnia, Just Zinnia and not Lorekeeper Zinnia, she will expand. She will live her life for Aster, living for the one who is gone and for the one that lives; for her dragons; for the Draconids, who still live on; and for herself. She will live, and in that her purpose will continue to change.

One day she might find the meaning of her life, what she'll dedicate everything she has for. One day she might find a nice man, either a Draconid or not, and have another child, maybe even another daughter. She might not.

But until she builds herself up, that one day might never come. And so she must find herself, and pull herself together into Zinnia.

"After we see the rest of Kalos," she says quietly, and her dragons perk up at her voice. "Where should we go next? Sinnoh? Unova?"

The mountains of steel and ice, and the land of the legendary twin dragons and heroes. Her dragons seem receptive to the idea, showing more enthusiasm than they did at her suggestion of the land of the fairies.

She giggles like a girl, like she hasn't for a long time now. "Let's see what happens," she says.

The next step she takes is almost liberating, like taking flight into the open skies.

* * *

AN: I love Zinnia. She's such an awesome character (maybe because of the PUMBLOOM) and I just want to spin backstories about her for days on. And, because I love AZ, and I kinda want to ship them together (it's the best crackship ever) I'm writing them although there's no shipping unless you put your shipping glasses on. The original version of this story actually had AZ as human Aster's father, but I scrapped that idea when I rewrote it.

I guess I just wanted her to go and find herself, because I think it would be incredibly jarring to say the least when one loses what they defined themselves as for a long time. Most of this story is headcanon, and the idea of inheriting memories was actually inspired by the Giver.

Inspirations: Lady of Shalott (Tennyson), Stolen Child (Yeats), Fate (Lee Sun Hee), Down Under (Men At Work), Phoenix (Fall Out Boy).

Thank you for reading.


End file.
